2/28/2012 @ 10:08AM7,927 views

The "On Your Own" Economy

“From cradle to grave.” So goes the motto of the entitlement state, whose creator Otto von Bismarck said: “Give the working-man the right to work as long as he is healthy, assure him care when he is sick, assure him maintenance when he is old.”

Are you bothered by the thought of government embedding itself in every aspect of your life? According to President Obama, the only alternative is “a government that tells the American people, you are on your own. If you get sick, you’re on your own. If you can’t afford college, you’re on your own. . . . That’s not the America I believe in.”

It is, however, the America the Founding Fathers believed in. What made America great was the fact that it was the first country in history where you were on your own.

Roll back the tape a few thousand years to when every element of life was controlled by the tribe. You could not live an independent existence, you could not choose your own ideas, your own values, your own destiny. You belonged to the group. The group, in turn, gave you a certain measure of protection: so long as you obeyed its commands, kept your place, and tended to its needs, you would get your scrap of food (if there was food to be had).

The story of freedom is the story of how the individual escaped from ownership by the tribe. As Ayn Rand once observed, “Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.”

The Founding Fathers took a crucial leap forward in that process, declaring that the collective has no claim on you; that the government exists only to protect your right to live your own life, earn your own wealth, and seek your own happiness. Other people’s wants and needs are not your responsibility.

The corollary was that you and you alone were responsible for securing your own wants and needs. You were responsible for developing the knowledge, skills, and traits of character you needed to earn a living. You were responsible for saving to meet life’s unexpected twists and turns. You were responsible for educating your children. You could ask for help from other people—but you could not demand it as a right. You were on your own.

Did people shrink from the twin values offreedom and responsibility? On the contrary, the vast majority of Americans during the 18th and 19th centuries eagerly embraced life’s challenges and flourished under the new system. People didn’t flee from America, they fled to America. They came here poor, but ambitious—ready to carve out a life for themselves in a country that offered them the only thing they asked for: an open road.

Of course, Americans during this era were not “on their own” in the lone-wolf, asocial sense implied by Obama. Free Americans developed complex webs of association based on voluntary agreement. An unprecedented division of labor—capitalists, businessmen, and workers coming together to create wealth on an industrial scale—was a product of this newfound freedom.

Far from leaving people unable to afford life’s necessities, it was this system of voluntary cooperation that enabled the masses to afford modern luxuries—things like cars, microwaves, and air conditioning, which the wealthiest men of past eras did not own.

What Americans of yesteryear lacked was not voluntary cooperation and trade, but involuntary servitude (slavery being the glaring, deplorable exception). Starting at the end of the 19th century, however, the Progressive movement began replacing individual freedom, individual responsibility, and voluntary association with an entitlement society. They promised to keep the benefits of the industrial economy that capitalism had created, while replacing the freedom that made it possible with a modern form of tribalism. The group would take responsibility for us from cradle to grave, and we in turn would become servants of the group, burdened with responsibility for the lives of others.

The Progressives and their present-day descendants have largely succeeded at eroding freedom. But the inevitable consequence is an economy nowhere near as vibrant as before. In a free country, you would decide how to live, whom to deal with, what obligations to accept, what projects to undertake, what values to uphold. But in entitlement America, you are forced to pay for other people’s tonsillectomies, other people’s Women’s Studies degrees, other people’s retirements, other people’s business subsidies, other people’s bailouts.

Americans today face a choice: Do we want to be on our own—or continue as society’s servants?

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WE are the Government…. Government is NOT the EVIL doer…. It’s the corrupt politicians…. Corrupt Lobbyists… Corrupt Corporations… and yes…. Corrupt Ideology that are the enemies of the American way of life.

The President (“Obama”) has NO control of WHAT the Congress CREATES and passes as legislation… the Lobbyists WHO write the laws do.

You think you have CHOICE in Healthcare from your PRIVATE Health Insurance Company? You choose your Doctor from the INSURANCE company list. You BUY prescription drugs from the INSURANCE company approved pharmacies and drug lists. IF your operation is NOT approved by the INSURANCE company… you go without and DIE if need be. IF you don’t have INSURANCE then WHO pays?

It seems that the government is not at fault for all the problems that confront us. Noone, not even Obama, is at fault–it’s the corrupt politicians. Then it’s we (“the government”) that are responsible because we elected them, and because we elect presidents like Obama. Then, of course, there are the corrupt corporations and lobbyists. My goodness, with all this evil in the world it’s no wonder that all he can do is complain, with no solutions in sight. Does he understand the nature of the founding of this country, the nature of individual rights, and the limited government principles embodied in the Constitution? My goodness, he must have been educated in one of those “Government Schools.” If our founders created a country based on his level of understanding, he would not even be alive today, nor would any of us! This is still the greatest country that ever existed. How did that happen? Does anyone care?

I am not the government. You are not the government. So how are “we” the government?

This assertion that “we” are the government just like the assertion that “we” are “society” is just your way of trying to take control of MY life. I have my values and you have yours. I don’t try to make you express or serve my values so please don’t try to enslave me to yours.

rpscott, your comment that “WE are the Government…. Government is NOT the EVIL doer” is the opposite of what the founders believed.

Read Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.

Government power is evil. Government power is necessary, but an evil necessity.

Conservatives understand that it must be limited by a constitution and kept in check in order to protect the individual’s rights and liberties.

Liberals see government power as a means to an end, and no matter how good the intentions, eventually evil will come from growing government.

Good intentions will always be pleaded for any assumption of power. The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters. -Daniel Webster

“collectivist ethical principle: man is not an end to himself, but is only a tool to serve the ends of others. Whether those ‘others’ are a dictator’s gang, the nation, society, the race, (the) god(s), the majority, the community, the tribe, etc., is irrelevant — the point is that man in principle must be sacrificed to others.” — Mark Da Cunha

“This right to life, this right to liberty, and this right to pursue one’s happiness is unabashedly individualistic, without in the slightest denying at the same time our thoroughly social nature. It’s only that our social relations, while vital to us all, must be chosen -­ that is what makes the cruucial difference.” — Prof. Tibor R. Machan

“…individualism is not antithetical to community. Rather, it can involve free association and a belief in an over-arching harmony of interests. In a free socety, individuals join with others because of love and mutual benefit, not because they are programmed or coerced.” — Prof. Clifford Thies

“The Founding Fathers took a crucial leap forward in that process, declaring that the collective has no claim on you; that the government exists only to protect your right to live your own life, earn your own wealth, and seek your own happiness. ”

… if you’re a land owning white, that is. They certainly had no interest in improving the situation for slavery or women.

One of the most frequent tactics employed to discredit America’s Founding Fathers is to say that the Founding Fathers were all pro-slavery racists and hypocrites.

The historical fact is that slavery was not the product of, nor was it an evil introduced by the Founders; slavery was introduced in America nearly two centuries before the Founders.

The Revolution was a turning point in the national attitude against slavery—and it was the Founders who contributed greatly to that change. In fact, one of the reasons given by Thomas Jefferson for the separation from Great Britain was a desire to rid America of the evil of slavery imposed on them by the British.